Greetings!
Here is the Baja Expeditions newsletter you requested. Whale sharks, those beautiful speckled and gentle giants, are the focus of this month. In May, we're inviting divers and snorkelers to help ID individual whale sharks with marine biologist Deni Ramirez. (And experience the best dive spots in Baja!)
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| Deni and her Whale Shark Research Project |
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 No math required
Deni Ramirez is a marine biologist, a doctoral student at the Northwestern Center for Biological Research in La Paz, Baja California. She is adding to the scant knowledge scientists have at present about whale sharks. In May, she'll be leading a Baja Expeditions dive quest, where divers and snorkelers can help her identify whale sharks --- especially pregnant females. Read more... |
| She's saving the biggest fish in the sea |
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Flavio is a big male that Deni tagged; he measured 23 feet long. That's about average for a whale shark --- they can reach 46 feet long, with females bigger than males. So this shark is about the size of a gray or a humpback whale.
Aren't blue whales the biggest animal in the sea? Yes, but they are mammals, not fish. The whale shark is a fish, a type of shark that looks like a whale, but is actually a fish. It doesn't breathe air. Like other fish, it gets its oxygen from the water passing over its gills. It doesn't have a blowhole like a whale has. You'll never hear us call, "Thar she blows!" when we spot a whale shark!
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| Using tiny ocean-going computers |
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...packed into thumb-size cylinders, Deni tags the whale sharks. Tags have come a long way from passive techniques like bird branding. The computers use a satellite to record geolocations at regular intervals. Tags can also read water temperature and pressure; from that information you can figure out how deep an animal is going. "Archival" tags store a record of many months of readings. Tagging with Pop-Up Archival Transmitting tags (PATs) is one of three methods Deni uses to assess whale shark populations. Read more... |
| In the wake of famous "Shark Lady" Dr. Eugenie Clark |
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Deni is following in the wake of one of the world's most renowned fish biologists and woman scientists, Dr. Eugenie Clark. Widely known as the "Shark Lady," Dr. Clark began her pioneering work in shark research in the 1950s and in 1995 was one of several scientists to discover that whale sharks are live-bearers. She and her co-authors found a pregnant whale shark --- a "megamomma" with 300 pups inside! That's way more than other species of live-bearing sharks, usually bearing anywhere between 1 and 80 pups. Read more... |
| Interested? Participate and get to name |
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 your own Whale Shark!
Divers and snorkelers will help take photos on the the Baja Expeditions trip that Deni is leading in May and help connect the dots (read the "Using tiny ocean-going computers" article above if you haven't already). You'll get whale shark registration sheets provided by CIBNOR (Centro de Investigaciones Biologicas del Noroeste), the Northwestern Center for Biological Research. If the whale shark that you spot is not in the catalog, you get to name it!
Sign up for the Whale Shark Diving Quest and Research Project and save $100 per person. This special promotion for our newsletter readers includes five free whale shark postcards.
Call Baja Expeditions today at 1-800-864-6967 or 858-581-3311 and just give the code WS2009.
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